Newsbusters.

Pseudo economics savant Paul Krugman just can’t give up trying to sell the snake oil of Bidenomics as being the unsung hero of the economy that the supposedly dumb plebeians just couldn’t appreciate.

Seriously, bro. Just take the “L” and move on.

Newsbusters.

In the past week, the Apple News aggregator entirely excluded right-leaning media outlets in its top 20 daily stories.

During the week of Nov. 8-14 Apple promoted articles from NPR, The Washington Post and NBC, but Fox News Digital was notably missing from the Apple News daily lineup. Fox News Digital is the third most-visited news site in America according to Statista’s list of “[l]eading global English-language news websites” calculated by monthly visits. New York Post and Daily Mail are not far behind. However, not a single Fox News, New York Post or Daily Mail article appeared among the top 20 news articles curated by Apple News editors each day of the week.

News aggregators curate articles from various sources to create a news feed that includes a wide range of outlets.

Of the 140 articles MRC Free Speech America researchers examined, 93 were from outlets rated “left” or “lean-left” by AllSides.

Richard Hanania.

Why not? Democrats certainly are.

As I’ve previously written, Groyperization on everything but the Jews has already occurred on the right. That leads to the question of what we do from here. We basically have a mainstream conservative movement that is motivated by implicit white nationalism, being challenged by an insurgency that is explicitly white nationalist. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that people who stress identitarian concerns will often be very flexible with economic arguments. Often, they end up agreeing with the left on economic issues, because that is the easiest way to make nativist arguments in a relatively non-offensive way.

One of the main things that differentiates pro-market and anti-market thinkers is the degree to which each side believes that market processes are zero-sum. Socialists tend to assume that there are fixed amounts of jobs and resources, and politics revolves around fighting over who gets what. Capitalism rests on the idea that trade generally makes both parties better off, and we can set things up so that everyone gets wealthier in the long run. The entire history of the progress of our species is one long advertisement for how the capitalists are right and the socialists are wrong.

People always feel the need to argue that their preferred policies will make others in society better off in tangible ways. Even postliberals who stress that things other than GDP matter will when they can argue that their preferred policies improve living standards. They get to have it both ways, making economic arguments when convenient and retreating to “we’re a nation, not an economy” when things go wrong.

The Foundry.

A key reason Democrats make so many Republicans grind our molars is that they will not take responsibility for their own gargantuan failures. Instead, Democrats blame the GOP for the damage that they inflict on America.

It’s bad enough when someone takes a skillet and repeatedly wallops you across the back of your head. What really irks is when that person then screams at you: “Stop smacking your skull with a skillet!”

This is a big part of why Democrats have become utterly insufferable.

Read it.

UBS Chair Colm Kelleher has discussed a potential U.S. headquarters move with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if Switzerland presses ahead with tougher capital rules, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.

Read it.

More people are falling behind on paying their bills to keep on the lights and heat their homes, according to a new analysis of consumer data — a warning sign for the U.S. economy and another political headache for President Donald Trump.

Past due balances to utility companies jumped 9.7% annually to $789 between the April-June periods of 2024 and 2025, said The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank. The increase has overlapped with a 12% jump in monthly energy bills during the same period.

Consumers usually prioritize their utility bills along with their mortgages and auto debt, said Julie Margetta Morgan, the foundation’s president. The increase in both energy costs and delinquencies may suggest that consumers are falling behind on other bills, too.

Read it.

Europe is facing a growing wave of anti-Christian violence, with Germany recording the highest number of arson attacks in 2024. According to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe), a total of 2,211 anti-Christian offenses were documented across the continent, including 274 personal attacks involving physical violence and threats.

Analysts warn that these figures reflect a climate of growing intolerance that affects local communities in concrete ways.

While Europe saw a slight decrease from 2,444 offenses in 2023, OIDAC Europe attributes this to incomplete data collection. Serious incidents included the fatal November 2024 attack on a 76-year-old monk in a Spanish monastery and an ISIS-related killing of a worshipper during Sunday Mass in Istanbul in January 2024. In France, a historic church in Saint-Omer was almost completely destroyed in an arson attack, while in Dijon, tear gas was sprayed during a Seventh-Day Adventist service, injuring nine people.

Read it.

Austria is heading for a heated debate this week as the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) pushes a motion to declare in the constitution that only two genders exist.

The FPÖ argues that the measure is necessary to “return to biological reality.” However, left-wing parties have accused the FPÖ of fuelling “societal polarization,” signalling tense debates ahead.

Austria is not alone in having this debate. Several other European countries have already taken steps to legally reaffirm the existence of only two sexes.

Read it.

Your life is “affordable” based primarily on two numbers — your income, and your cost of housing.. Mayors don’t influence your income, and they shouldn’t try to influence what you pay for housing.

If government, at any level, wants to make your life more affordable, it should do the following:

• • • • Keep taxes low.
      • Keep inflation low.
      • Keep interest rates low (which you can’t do if inflation is high)
      • Keep immigration low.
        • • High immigration adds demand to the housing market and therefore housing prices go higher.
          • High immigration adds supply to the job market and therefore wages go lower.
      • Cut regulations on businesses. 
        • • Regulations add costs. Those costs are passed on to consumers.
          • Regulations make starting a business more difficult. Therefore there is less competition. Therefore prices are higher.
      • Don’t limit businesses. Let them grow. 
        • • Particularly energy companies. The more energy, the better.
          • Particularly homebuilders. The more building activity, the better.

It should be noted at this point that during all four years of the Biden administration, the federal government did the exact opposite regarding every item on the above list. It is not a coincidence that affordability is a hot political topic after four years of the federal government doing everything it could do to make life less affordable.

Read it.

Last week a young Pakistani culture-enricher violently attacked a group of American Jews at the main railway station in Milan. Some of the members of the group must have been “visibly Jewish”, thus arousing his rage, but the following report doesn’t specifically mention that aspect of the incident.

Read it.

In Oxfordshire, England, along the River Cherwell, a massive illegal landfill has been discovered. Over a stretch of 150 meters, tons of waste have accumulated, posing a serious environmental threat. This is not an isolated incident in England, which now faces the mafia-like structures of its waste and water industry.

Oxfordshire, located northwest of London, is usually a tranquil natural paradise. The county is home not only to the world-famous University of Oxford – it has now also become the scene of a striking environmental scandal.

Over a length of 150 meters in the river’s floodplain, hundreds of tons of plastic waste have piled up. A massive ecological disaster is looming: toxic substances could seep into the groundwater if the river overflows during heavy rains.

Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for the constituency, demanded immediate government cleanup efforts to prevent an environmental and groundwater catastrophe.

Read it.

Just look at one of its recent press releases, launching something called the European Democracy Shield, which promises to protect everything from “free people” to “free elections” to — this being Brussels — “a vibrant civil society”.

All admirable stuff, perhaps, at least on paper.

In reality, though, the Democracy Shield is just the latest vision in unfreedom: suppressing dissent and policing speech under the pretext of defending democracy from foreign interference and fake news.

Read it.

There is a version of my life that could have existed, and for a long time it looked like the path I was on. I was a successful restaurateur, financially independent, living a neat and polished life that most people would label as accomplishment. I could have stayed that woman. A single woman with a couple of well-trained pets, a beautiful home in a gated golf-course community, and a thriving business. No obligations, no interruptions, and no sticky hands tugging my shirt while I tried to answer an email.

Society would have applauded that version of me and called it freedom.

The irony is that during that time, I was feeding thousands of people from-scratch food. I knew the value of real ingredients and traditional cooking techniques, yet I did not fully understand the deeper meaning of nourishment. Not just physical nourishment, but the cultural and generational work that happens when families cook and eat together. The work that forms identity.

Today my life looks very different. I have four children and a farm, and nothing about our life is quiet or controlled. Just yesterday my 10-year-old stood next to me making jam from blueberries and blackberries, and then we bottled homemade barbecue sauce. The younger kids ran barefoot around us, coming in and out of the kitchen like little barn swallows, leaving laughter, questions, and a trail of crumbs behind. It was chaotic, imperfect, and slow. Yet in the middle of the noise, I could feel something ancient. Something right.

Moments like that used to be normal. Today they are the exception, and that realization has been stirring something in me. It raises a difficult question that many people avoid because the answer is uncomfortable.

The Atlantic, a Voice of the Crust.

What, exactly, is the plan for all the pennies?

Many Americans—and many people who, though not American, enjoy watching from a safe distance as predictable fiascoes unfold in this theoretical superpower from week to week—find themselves now pondering one question. What is the United States going to do with all the pennies—all the pennies in take-a-penny-leave-a-penny trays, and cash registers, and couch cushions, and the coin purses of children, and Big Gulp cups full of pennies; all the pennies that are just lying around wherever—following the abrupt announcement that the country is no longer in the penny game and will stop minting them, effective immediately?

The answer appears to be nothing at all. There is no plan.

This is the sort of proglodyte twat that writes for the Narrative Media. Whatever it is, there has to be a plan. A government plan. To be without a government plan is to be outside of civilization. The very foundation of the world will tremble.

Exactly why there needs to be a plan for the pennies now in circulation is never discussed. Never even mentioned.

Can’t people just spend ’em if they got ’em? 300 billion. That ought to be enough to keep people happy.

Could they stick them in penny-collection cards?

Melt them down for model soldiers?

Put them on railroad tracks because that just the dumb shit that people do?

Apparently not.

There must be a plan. And it must be a government plan. Else the universe will dissolve into chaos.

Here’s Why Trump’s “50-Year Mortgage” is a Terrible Idea (Tahra Hoops/Home of the Brave)

‘Trump is inconsistent with Christian principles’: why the Democratic party is seeing a rise of white clergy candidates (David Smith/The Guardian)

Trump buys at least $82 million in bonds since late August, disclosures show (Nandita Bose/Reuters)  So what?

Trump Buys Another $82 Million of Corporate and Municipal Bonds (Bloomberg)  So what?

Trump blocked from gutting Voice of America collective bargaining rights (Ryan Knappenberger/Courthouse News …)  Gutting!

MSNBC’s Jen Psaki Shames Team Trump for Citing Epstein Victim in Trump’s Defense

PBS Promotes Military Personnel Questioning Legality of Trump Moves

GOP-led Epstein probe in House creates political friendly fire for Trump (Paul Kane/Washington Post)  I guess Trump is guilty until proven innocent.

Trump’s Racially Discriminatory Refugee Policy (Ilya Somin/Reason)

Trump’s broadside against health insurers is a cautionary tale for industry (Amanda Chu/Politico)

Immigration crackdown inspires uniquely Chicago pushback that’s now a model for other cities (Associated Press)  Yeah—all Democrats are now tagged as pro-crime.

The Grift Bubble — A Political Theory of American Collapse — How does a country burst? (Timothy Snyder/Thinking about)  From living in a fantasy world where everything is free and nobody is responsible.

Trump’s tariffs are costing companies. Keeping up with them may cost even more. (Doug Palmer/Politico)

‘Noem should resign over this’: Fury over alleged DHS ‘child kidnapping and trafficking’ (David McAfee/Raw Story)

Read it.

A Labour government plan to house 600 young men at an army training camp near an East Sussex town brought 2000 residents onto the streets in protest on Sunday, November 16th.

Crowborough (pop. 21,688) is scheduled to see asylum seekers housed in a currently disused army training camp on its outskirts. The move has been condemned by the local authority, Wealden District Council.

Sussex Police noted a planned peaceful protest on its patch Sunday morning, with no arrests made. Slogans used included “Starmer Out” and “Crowborough Says No!”

Read it.

Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley has sounded an alarm about the state of the US job market, saying Ford has been unable to fill 5,000 mechanic jobs paying $120,000 a year. Those $120,000 salaries are nearly double the US average.

“We are in trouble in our country. We are not talking about this enough,” said Farley in an appearance last week on the Office Hours: Business Edition podcast. He said the shortage of qualified manual laborers isn’t confined to Ford, but is something businesses across the nation are struggling with.

That’s what happens when you get rid of Shop and Home Ec and send everybody off to college.

Read it.

Leftist media figures are increasingly walking on eggshells when discussing President Trump, hastily retracting or clarifying statements to avoid potential defamation lawsuits that could bankrupt their networks.

Yeah, accountability is a real bitch.

Read it.

Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have used machine learning to design nano-architected materials that have the strength of carbon steel but the lightness of Styrofoam.

In a new paper published in Advanced Materials, a team led by Professor Tobin Filleter (MIE) describes how they made nanomaterials with properties that offer a conflicting combination of exceptional strength, light weight and customizability. The approach could benefit a wide range of industries, from automotive to aerospace.

“Nano-architected materials combine high performance shapes, like making a bridge out of triangles, at nanoscale sizes, which takes advantage of the ‘smaller is stronger’ effect, to achieve some of the highest strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios, of any material,” says Peter Serles (MIE MASc 1T9, MIE PhD?2T4), the first author of the new paper.

“However, the standard lattice shapes and geometries used tend to have sharp intersections and corners, which leads to the problem of stress concentrations. This results in early local failure and breakage of the materials, limiting their overall potential.

“As I thought about this challenge, I realized that it is a perfect problem for machine learning to tackle.”

Read it.

The Paris Climate Agreement turns ten this month. But COP21’s outcome — in which 195 countries pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to achieve a global temperature outcome — is in serious peril. COP30, now in session, finds almost all signatories out of compliance with their “nationally determined contributions.” Major emitters such as the United States and Russia are not participating in the annual meeting either. How much longer can “Net Zero” and like UN global aspirations continue?

Specifically, only one of the 40 major reporting groups (accounting for 85% of global emissions) is on track, and most of the rest have not even submitted a target. “This lack of progress is deeply concerning,” Climate Action Tracker reported, citing a need to “step up mitigation efforts and avoid weakening targets by relying on offsets and sinks….”

The U.S. is rated “critically insufficient,” joining Russia, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, and six others. Canada, China, India, Argentina, and three others are “highly insufficient,” and the trend is negative for virtually all countries with growing economies.

The climatistas won’t be happy until humanity goes extinct and quits being the source of all that’s wrong in the world.

Read it.

The progressive left never admits they are wrong and they always double down on failure. This is the mindset that continues to lead Democrats down a path of self destruction along with the cities they inhabit. One cannot separate the ongoing decline of US cities from far-left policies; one precipitates the other.

The implosion of Joe Biden’s faux presidency and the defeat of the Kamala Harris campaign left Democrats reeling and searching for answers, but it didn’t take long for them to dismiss the idea of self reflection and come to the predictably insane conclusion they are right and everyone else is the enemy.

The answer, they argue, is not to abandon their radical ideology and find their way back to common sense. Rather, they believe that they lost the elections because their candidates were “not extreme enough.”

But what could possibly be more extreme than Biden’s mass online censorship campaign? His calls for pandemic vaccine passports for Americans to keep their jobs? His implementation of DEI and CRT programs across the federal government and the US military? His consistent denials over the stagflation crisis? When he declared Easter Sunday as “Transgender Day of Visibility?” What about the topless LGBT parties on the White House Lawn?

How much worse can a political leader get? Well, we’re about to find out.

Read it.

Just over 15 years ago, when the Democrat-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate were debating the healthcare proposals offered by the Democrat president, nearly everyone on the political right was unified in opposition. It may well have been the last time the right was united on anything, but it was indeed unified and resolute.

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (MN) warned that “This monstrosity of a bill will not only destroy the private healthcare market, it will lead to massive increases in premiums and rationed care.” Congressman (and eventual vice-presidential nominee and Speaker of the House) Paul Ryan (WI) complained that “This bill is a fiscal Frankenstein. It’s a government takeover that will explode costs and kill jobs.” Senator (and Republican Leader) Mitch McConnell (KY) insisted that Americans “want reforms that lower costs, not a trillion-dollar government experiment.”

Right-leaning commentators like George Will and Charles Krauthammer agreed, not only with each other but with Republicans in Congress as well. Krauthammer, in particular, argued that President Obama’s promise to “bend the cost curve” down was pure, unadulterated, and extensively documented fantasy. National Review, much maligned among Trump supporters these days, dedicated most of an issue to exposing and forecasting Obamacare’s fiscal absurdities and the likelihood that it would result in lower quality of care, increased taxes, and exploding insurance premiums. Even the Heritage Foundation—in the news lately for purportedly exacerbating rifts in the conservative coalition—likewise agreed with everyone in the movement, insisting that Obamacare was a disaster waiting to happen and would keep none of the promises that it made, all while destroying what was good and valuable in the private insurance market.

Read it.

In a curious twist, voters typically aligned with Democrats are increasingly purchasing firearms, citing fear of the Trump administration and rising civil unrest as reasons for their newfound appreciation of the Second Amendment, NPR reported Saturday.

Several individuals, many requesting anonymity, said they fear the current administration has created a climate of hostility toward marginalized groups, prompting them to become gun buyers.

“What I’m talking about is protecting myself from a situation where there may be some kind of civil unrest,” said a man identified only as Charles, who is Black.

Welcome to our world. Be careful not to step in the diversity.

DHS.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the removal of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico who was arrested in April, despite a judge attempting to help him evade arrest.

On April 18, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), assisted by deputized FBI law enforcement officials, carried out a targeted operation to arrest Flores-Ruiz, a violent criminal illegal alien at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. His laundry list of violent criminal charges includes strangulation and suffocation, battery, and domestic abuse.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested for obstructing the arrest of Flores-Ruiz. Judge Dugan intentionally directed ICE agents away from this criminal illegal alien to obstruct the arrest and try to help him evade arrest. Thankfully, our law enforcement chased down this violent illegal alien and arrested him. ICE removed this criminal on November 13, 2025.

Newsweek, a Voice of the Crust.

Human corpses move around significantly as they decompose, according to an Australian researcher who observed a dead body over a 17-month period.

Australian researcher Alyson Wilson, the lead author of the study, found that the dead body moved for more than a year after death—findings which could have significant implications for post-mortem investigations, AFP reported.

Wilson suggests that the process of decomposition could be responsible for the movements: as the body mummifies, the ligaments dry out, causing parts to move.

“What we found was that the arms were significantly moving, so that arms that started off down beside the body ended up out to the side of the body,” Wilson told ABC News.

Razib Khan, a very well-respected geneticist.

There is more in heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in any human philosophy. This is why science is not philosophy. Those who map the skies, observe the patterns of a school of fish, or dissect molecular processes are well aware of this. We scientists wander dark and strange lands, and encounter startling landscapes and creatures beyond our wildest imaginations.

Only within the last few centuries have we come to realise that the great bowl of the dark night sky is filled with suns of a power and spectacle that we can’t even recreate in our mind’s eye. The ancient constellation of Orion contains bright blue Rigel and resplendent crimson Betelgeuse. In biology, microscopes have given our eyes access to a world previously unknown to us. The water bear, the tardigrade, is a beast of such profound strangeness that we perceive in its essence something deeply alien, as if it were from another realm altogether, and not just part of a world below our conventional acuity of perception.

And yet one hundred and fifty years ago Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution, which was predicated on the fact that all life on this planet shares a common descent: from fish to fowl, to the great beech tree and the lowliest pond scum. And, yes, humanity and the tardigrade as well.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

Google Maps can be unreliable at the best of times when you’re travelling in China, but in the southern megacity of Chongqing, a map of any kind turns out to be almost entirely useless. Built across a series of impossibly steep mountainsides and vertiginous valleys at the dramatic confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers, it is an astonishing urban phenomenon to behold – a vertically sprawling city that can only be understood in three dimensions.

It is a place where neighbourhoods cling to cliffs, connected by elevated roads 20 storeys up in the air. Metro lines emerge from tunnels through the mountains, only to plunge straight through the middle of residential skyscrapers, which themselves sprout improbably from the sheer slopes. Something that looks close by on the map can turn out to be tens of storeys above or below you. And getting there usually makes for an exhilarating journey.

Ars Technica.

It has been a few years since AI began successfully tackling the challenge of predicting the three-dimensional structure of proteins, complex molecules that are essential for all life. Next-generation tools are now available, and the Nobel Prizes have been handed out. But people not involved in biology can be forgiven for asking whether any of it can actually make a difference.

A nice example of how the tools can be put to use is being released in Nature on Wednesday. A team that includes the University of Washington’s David Baker, who picked up his Nobel in Stockholm last month, used software tools to design completely new proteins that are able to inhibit some of the toxins in snake venom. While not entirely successful, the work shows how the new software tools can let researchers tackle challenges that would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

Trump Plan May Cut Green Cards for Travel-Ban Nations

QAnon influencers baselessly suggest newly released Epstein emails show Trump was an “informant” against Epstein (Alex Kaplan/Media Matters for America)  Ah, yes, the dreaded “QAnon influencers.” Have you ever met one? Would you even know how to go about finding one? Seriously?

Trump drops tariffs on beef, coffee, tropical fruit as pressure builds on consumer prices (Associated Press)  Would a Democrat President be that flexible? I think not.

These Reagan-appointed judges have had it with Trump (Kyle Cheney/Politico)  Are you really going to believe anything written about Trump by someone naned Cheney?

Epstein files reveal his obsession with Trump (Miami Herald)  Just like every Narrative Media outlet in the world.

Only 2.6% on list of 614 ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ arrestees had criminal histories, DOJ records show (Chicago Tribune)  Insisting on ‘criminal histories’ is how they get around the fact that being in the country illegally is a felony and makes you ipso facto a ‘criminal’. They want you to think that, just because they haven’t been convicted of a crime, they’re not criminals. Conviction doesn’t make the criminal; crime does.

Georgia Judge Drops 3 Counts in Trump Election Case

Epstein Sent Trump a Truck Load of Baby Food for Losing Bet (Harry Thompson/The Daily Beast)  Supposedly this says something bad about Trump, otherwise it wouldn’t  be in the Daily Beast, but I confess that it escapes me.

MSNBC’s Katy Tur: Trump is ‘Callous’ for Firing Feds, Withholding SNAP

Trump’s redistricting campaign isn’t going well (Cameron Peters/Vox)  They hope.

Amid Trump’s Deportation Push, More Families Are Being Torn Apart (New York Times)  ODF.

Trump administration takes formal step toward freeing Tina Peters (Kyle Clark/KUSA-TV)

‘Unlawful coercion’: Trump can’t withhold funds or demand payment from UC, federal judge rules (Mikhail Zinshteyn/CalMatters)

Epstein, Fuentes and Trump’s Political Erosion (New York Times)  If they say it loud enough, and repeat is enough times, perhaps it will really happen. “I think it will, I think it will, I think it will, I think it will….”

Trump Is Wrong About Fentanyl in Almost Every Way (David Herzberg/New York Times)

Judge Orders Trump Not to Threaten University of California’s Funding (Alan Blinder/New York Times)

Latino US citizens racially profiled by federal immigration agents in Chicago: ‘I felt like a piece of trash’ (Chicago Tribune)  Since when is “Latino” a race? Do not all demographic statistics say “Hispanic of all races”?

Judge bars Trump from immediately cutting funding to the University of California (Associated Press)

BBC Edits Trump; Trump Still The Villain

Trump-Licensed Presidential Seal Beer Pong Set Could Violate Federal Law (Zach Everson/Forbes)  I’m sure it does, somewhere, somehow….

NPR Can’t Abide Trump Truth on Anti-White South Africa Acts: Afrikaners Not His ‘Pawns’

Fired Scholars and Big Grants to Favored Projects: Inside Trump’s N.E.H. (Jennifer Schuessler/New York Times)

Donald Trump re-ignites feud with Sadiq Khan in unhinged TV rant  Unhinged!

MS NOW Only Goes 4.5 Hours Before Making First Nazi Analogy

Trump stews and Dems gloat over feud with Marjorie Taylor Greene (Politico)  It doesn’t matter who you are: If you cross Trump, you get crossed off. I’m surprised people haven’t learned that by now.

Force A Referendum On The Epstein Coverup (Brian Beutler/Off Message)

Senate Democrat: Trump in ‘daily panic mode’ over Epstein files (Ryan Mancini/The Hill)  And, of course, Senate Democrats always (a) know what Trump is thinking and (b) tell the truth about it.?

TDS of the disabling variety  I suspect that people who depend on ‘therapy’ are the sort of people that would contract TDS readily.

Read it.

You won’t see this on the nightly news:

UN Report shows Gazan Palestinian Arabs fatter than Israelis

What some are calling the ‘Fatocide’ reflects the reality that there was never a famine in Gaza, but there was a very real obesity problem.

Read it.

The recent wealth tax increase in Norway was expected to bring in an additional $146M in yearly tax revenue.

Instead, individuals worth $54B left the country, leading to a lost $594M in yearly wealth tax revenue.

That’s a net decrease of $448M+.

The mass departure of Norway’s billionaires has transformed into an unprecedented exodus, as the nation’s tax administration grapples with one of Europe’s most demanding wealth tax and income tax rates. Last year marked a watershed moment in this capital flight, with more than NOK 600 billion in assets leaving the country as high-net-worth individuals increasingly opted for tax havens over their homeland.

The phenomenon has caught the attention of global media, with The Guardian and other outlets documenting the steady stream of super-rich Norwegians seeking refuge in more financially hospitable jurisdictions.

In the Good Old Days, before education went to shit, we could be confident that everyone who graduated high school would get this jokd. Nowadays, we would be lucky if they recognize John Donne’s name.

Read it.

Oktoberfest is all done, so mischievous youngsters in Munich have to find other ways to keep themselves busy. There’s no more gratifying form of youthful fun than occupying a building at a technical university and then shooting off fireworks from the roof, so that’s exactly what these high-spirited kids did.

That’s how they speak truth to power in Munich.

Read it.

Belgium’s ongoing evacuation of people from the Gaza Strip has triggered a political storm after footage emerged of two young boys arriving at Ostend Airport wearing black sweatshirts printed with large images of an M16 rifle.

The pair was among 75 Palestinians evacuated at the end of October, part of a wider humanitarian operation that has brought around 850 people to Belgium since 2023.

he incident has sparked renewed debate over screening procedures for arrivals from conflict zones.

Read it.

And who could blame them?

Staten Island lawmakers are reviving a long-running effort to have the borough secede from New York City, arguing that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s win earlier this month has deepened the political divide between the so-called “forgotten borough” and the rest of the city.

State Sen. Andrew Lanza, a Staten Island Republican who has pushed secession legislation since 2008, said the political climate is now aligning with Staten Island’s longstanding frustrations.

“The Democratic Socialist could not be further out of sync with the values of communities on Staten Island,” Lanza told The New York Post, adding that Democrats may be less motivated to block the effort because losing Staten Island could make it even harder for the city to elect a Republican mayor.

American Greatness. (Not the Babylon Bee)

The CEO of Crowds On Demand is urging members of Congress to pass a Transparency In Political Demonstration Act (TPDA) that would require greater transparency in groups that hire demonstrators for events around the country.

Adam Swart wrote a letter to Congress on November 11, calling for more transparency in who is hiring protestors in order to “protect free speech while ensuring accountability and safety.”

Read it.

Iran confirmed Saturday that its Revolutionary Guards had seized a tanker in Gulf waters carrying a cargo of petrochemicals bound for Singapore over alleged violations, Iranian state media reported.

A U.S. official and maritime security sources had said Friday that Iranian forces intercepted the oil products tanker and diverted it into Iranian territorial waters. It was the first report of Tehran seizing a tanker since Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran in June.

Iranian state-run television read a statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stating that “the tanker was in violation for carrying unauthorized cargo.” It did not provide further details of the alleged violations.

Read it.

As Germans do….

In its latest annual report, Germany’s Council of Economic Experts — once regarded as a market-oriented corrective to government excess — has presented what can only be described as a courtesy opinion. Rather than challenging the political status quo, the five “wise men” largely echo Berlin’s own agenda: more state intervention, higher taxes, and tighter regulation.

On Wednesday, the council presented its annual report at the federal press conference. For the first time, Chancellor Friedrich Merz received the economists’ assessment in person. What they handed him, however, reads less like independent advice and more like a compilation of familiar political slogans.

At the top of the list stands — yet again — the call for “cutting bureaucracy,” a mantra repeated endlessly but never realized. Meanwhile, the council ignores the core problem: the German economy is suffocating under its own regulatory machinery. In the past three years alone, businesses have had to hire roughly 325,000 additional staff just to deal with the avalanche of new rules — a massive diversion of resources that adds nothing to productivity.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

A bipartisan congressional report published on Nov. 12 revealed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) manipulates critical minerals markets to further its global ambitions.

Does this come as a surprise to anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Read it.

The Trump administration will require millions of food aid recipients to recertify their information to receive benefits, part of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ effort to overhaul the program, she told Newsmax on Thursday.

On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Rollins said she plans to “have everyone reapply for their benefits, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through … food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it.”

Rollins was discussing fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and said after receiving data on recipients from 29 red states that “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.”

Cue Democrat outrage.

Read it.

If you were told a business increased their staff headcount by 5% over four years but its payroll rose 24% over that time, all the while withholding the names of 39% of their staff, would you invest in that company?

Depends. What’s the dividend rate of return?

Unlikely. But that’s just what the United State government does, funded by taxpayer dollars and operating as if accountable to no one.

Open the Books analyzed the FY 2024 payroll records of executive agencies and found that 2.9 million federal employees were paid $270 billion, compared to 2.8 million employees paid $217 billion in FY 2020. While the civilian employee ranks grew 5%, pay grew nearly 5 times as much, 24%.

Read it.

Indiana’s Republican-controlled Senate on Friday shut down a special-session redistricting push sought by President Donald Trump, an unexpected setback for the White House as Republicans try to secure a stronger House majority heading into a complex 2026 midterm cycle.

Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray said Republicans in the chamber do not have enough support to reconvene next month to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, ending months of internal lobbying by state and national GOP leaders.

In a statement, Bray said lawmakers had given “very serious and thoughtful consideration” to revisiting the map but ultimately lacked the votes to advance the proposal.

Would Democrats have done that? I think not.

Read it.

t didn’t take long for the words Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela, and chemical weapons to show up in the same US government national security memo. We’ve examined before various possible ‘justifications’ Washington might use for some kind of future military action on Venezuela, or even a full regime change operation.

From Vietnam to Iraq to Libya, Washington is always looking for some kind of casus belli – even if it has to be manufactured – to sell war to the American people. And now we’re quickly in WMD territory at a moment that unprecedented US Naval power is parked off Venezuela’s coast.

“A classified Justice Department brief authorizing strikes on drug-smuggling boats describes fentanyl as a potential chemical weapons threat, according to a House member and another person familiar with the memo,” a Friday Wall Street Journal report says.

Read it.

Former University of Virginia President James Ryan has released a letter describing why he resigned over the summer, saying the Department of Justice threatened to cut off federal funding unless he stepped down.

The Hill reported that he said the pressure came during the larger Trump administration push targeting colleges and universities.

The DOJ has denied calling for his removal.

Imagine an institution that is so dependent on ‘federal funding’ that it’s more important to that institution than who the President is.

Imagine an institution where the President is so dedicated to doing DEI shit that he would quit his job rather than drop it.

George Carlin: “You don’t need a conspiracy when everybody involved knows what they need to do.”

Instead of calling them ‘conspiracy theories’ we ought to call them ‘spoiler alerts’.

Read it.

Most of us now are aware of the ever-tightening grip of tyranny, and the erosion of our liberties, occasioned by ever more remote centralisation. To break it, we need a process which prevents power, both political and commercial, from continuing to rise to the top of a pyramid, from where our little lives are run by a few people who have no human connection with us. Here is my first blueprint.

I suggest a secession, whereby each of England’s 39 original, historic counties makes a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). They are: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire.

Greater London should disappear, its boroughs reverting entirely to their counties. Inner London, I suggest, would also be subsumed into its surrounding counties.

It’s fun to think about, and I’d love to read a SF story based on this premise, but it has about 0.1% chance of ever happening, given what we know about people and about people in politics. So read it for the entertainment value, but don’t get your hopes up.